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MORNINGSTAR

By Murdo MACLEOD

Historical - Completed 2022

In a land emerging from the Black Death, caught between a corrupt church and a brutal state, one ambitious priest comes to a new understanding which will change the world.

John Wycliffe has been painted as both hero and villain; as saint and heretic. But who was the man behind the myth?

Festivals
& Awards

ICVM 2023

Bronze Crown Award for Best Documentary

- Year of production
- 2022
- Genres
- Historical, Biography, Documentary
- Countries
- UNITED KINGDOM
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 78 mn
- Director(s)
- Murdo MACLEOD
- Cast
- Jared MORGAN
- Synopsis
- The Black Death sweeps through Europe and into England. Whole villages are decimated, and barely a family escapes unscathed.
  
  In Oxford University, recent graduate John Wycliffe ponders why God sent the Plague, and why God spared him. Determined to make his life count, Wycliffe gets himself ordained as a priest and begins to make some noise. The Plague, he says, was God’s punishment on the church for corruption and sin.
  
  Wycliffe comes to the attention of the powerful Duke of Lancaster, and joins him on a mission to Bruges, where they are to debate a new tax the Pope is demanding.
  
  In Bruges, Wycliffe argues fiercely that the church has grown degenerate. Naturally, this makes him no friends in the church leadership, and on his return to England, he is summoned in front of William Courteney, the Bishop of London. On the day of the hearing, however, the Duke accompanies Wycliffe to court with a threatening squad of guards. Everything descends into a murderous riot.
  
  Furious, the Pope demands that Wycliffe be tried on suspicion of heresy, a charge which carries the death penalty. But the Queen intervenes at the last moment. She forbids the Archbishop to pass sentence. Wycliffe is free, but the experience is a watershed moment. The church is not merely corrupt politically – it has fundamentally misunderstood what the heart of Christianity is really about.
  
  Back in Oxford, Wycliffe inspires a new generation of students with a wholly different take on the Christian faith – one based on the Bible, rather than on church authority. His students lose no time in spreading this message around the country. Anywhere they can get a hearing – in farms and at crossroads – they tell people to forget the church and think instead about Jesus.
  
  When his ideas get too strong to be tolerated in Oxford, Wycliffe finds himself banished to the Midlands village of Lutterworth. But instead of allowing himself to wallow in outrage, he begins an even greater work: translating the Bible from Latin into English.
  
  In his old age, Wycliffe returns to Oxford University. In front of Archbishop Courteney he defends his beliefs, and makes an impassioned plea for the people to leave the gloomy walls of the church for a simple and peaceful life under the open vault of heaven.
  
  Some years after his death, the church digs up Wycliffe’s bones, burns them for heresy, and scatters the ashes on the nearby river. The current carries them down to the sea; the ocean tides wash them around the globe, and today, Wycliffe’s ideas are shared by people in every country of the world.

MORNINGSTAR

Festivals& Awards

Festivals
& Awards